Truth and Reconciliation Day

With Sept 30th being a non-school day, we observed Truth and Reconciliation Day on Monday the 29th.  Staff and students wore our orange shirts in remembrance of the students who weren't allowed to wear their favorite bright colours.  We also gave pins in the shape of orange shirts to our students.

We watched a video of an elder reading the book "Stolen Words", by Melanie Florence.  This picture book is the story of a little girl and her grandfather.  When the girl learns that her grandfather doesn't remember his ancestral language and the reasons why, she finds a way to help him reconnect with his lost words.  We followed this with an activity where students chose a word, such as family, friends, love, etc. and made a poster of that word in many different language, encouraging them to seek out the language that would be spoken by their own family's elders.

Our lunch today was sponsored by our Fulham School Parent Council.  We ate together as a school community in the library.  Thank you to the two moms who prepared it- it was delicious!

For our last activity today, we watched a video of an elder reading the book "When We Were Alone", by David Robertson.  This story is about a little girl who is spending time with her grandmother in the garden.  She notices many things about her grandmother that is different- her colourful clothing, long hair, and how she values time with her family.  Her grandmother shares how there was a time when she was taken away from her family and sent to a school far from home, when all of those things were taken from her.  We talked about all the different types of family and our students then each made a poster of their family that we can display in our library.